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•Superb and reusable adsorbent WSH was successfully synthesized from shrimp shells.•Maximum adsorption capacity of WSH was 755.08 mg/g at optimal pH of 4.0.•Exothermic adsorption was ...spontaneous and followed monolayer adsorption pattern.•Electrostatic interaction was mainly responsible for the prominent adsorption.
Shrimp processing and consumption generate large amounts of waste shrimp shell (WSS) rich in chitin and protein. Herein, we successfully synthesized WSS-based hydrochar (WSH) adsorbent through deproteinization and deacetylation followed by hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) and acid washing. For comparison, another hydrochar (CCH) adsorbent was synthesized from HTC of commercial chitosan under identical conditions. Specifically, WSH contained rich nitrogen-containing functional groups with a long aliphatic chains structure. Acid etching of calcium carbonate in WSS led to a higher specific surface area of WSH (12.65 m2/g) which was nearly 6 times higher than that of CCH (2.13 m2/g). The lower deacetylation degree of WSH was responsible for higher amide I and amino groups retained therein. Under an optimal initial solution pH of 4.0, WSH could rapidly achieve a superb adsorption capacity of 755.08 mg/g for methyl orange molecule. Moreover, the adsorption process followed a pseudo-second-order kinetics model and was well described by a monolayer adsorption pattern based on the Langmuir isotherm model with correlation coefficients higher than 0.9989. Prominent adsorption performance of WSH for methyl orange was mainly attributed to electrostatic interactions, while steric hindrance effect had a detrimental impact on the adsorption capacity of CCH. Superb adsorption capacity and excellent regeneration performance suggest WSH could be a promising and affordable adsorbent candidate for anionic dye removal.
In the present study, we investigated the spatial change of sediment nitrite-dependent anaerobic methane-oxidizing (n-damo) organisms in the mesotrophic freshwater Gaozhou Reservoir (6 different ...sampling locations and 2 sediment depths (0–5 cm, 5–10 cm)), one of the largest drinking water reservoirs in China. The abundance of sediment n-damo bacteria was quantified using quantitative polymerase chain reaction assay, while the richness, diversity, and composition of n-damo pmoA gene sequences were characterized using clone library analysis. Vertical and horizontal changes in sediment n-damo bacterial abundance occurred in Gaozhou Reservoir, with 1.37 × 10
5
to 8.24 × 10
5
n-damo 16S rRNA gene copies per gram of dry sediment. Considerable horizontal and vertical variations of n-damo pmoA gene diversity (Shannon index = 0.32–2.50) and composition also occurred in this reservoir. Various types of sediment n-damo pmoA genes existed in Gaozhou Reservoir. A small proportion of n-damo pmoA gene sequences (19.1%) were related to those recovered from “Candidatus Methylomirabilis oxyfera”. Our results suggested that sediment n-damo pmoA gene diversity might be regulated by nitrite, while n-damo pmoA gene richness might be governed by multiple environmental factors, including total organic carbon, total phosphorus, nitrite, and total nitrogen.
Abstract
In this study, the performance of A-reinforced sandwich structures made with polymethacrylimide (PMI) foam material is explored. The research focuses on comparing two forming methods, ...bonding and co-curing. It also tests the static properties of sandwich test pieces under different forming pressures. It reveals that the foam sandwich structure formed under the 0.15 MPa bonding process outperforms the rest regarding static properties. These findings provide valuable insights into the optimal structure-forming process for PMI foam sandwiches, paving the way for future advancements in this field.
Abstract
The Hartmann wavefront sensor can measure the phase change of atmospheric turbulence in real time and realize the measurement of the distorted wavefront signal of atmospheric turbulence. ...However, existing Hartmann wavefront sensor microlens arrays are generally small, which limits their spatial resolution capabilities. By introducing compressed sensing technology into wavefront detection, this paper breaks through the limitations of the traditional Nyquist sampling theorem and achieves higher resolution spatial wavefront detection with a smaller microlens array.
Hematological markers that can be used for prognosis prediction for stage I lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) are still lacking. Here, we examined the prognostic value of a combination of the red cell ...distribution width (RDW) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), namely, the RDW-CEA score (RCS), in stage I LUAD.
A retrospective study with 154 patients with stage I LUAD was conducted. Patients were divided into RCS 1 (decreased RDW and CEA), RCS 2 (decreased RDW and increased CEA, increased RDW and decreased CEA), and RCS 3 (increased RDW and CEA) subgroups based on the best optimal cutoff points of RDW and CEA for overall survival (OS). The differences in other clinicopathological parameters among RCS subgroups were calculated. Disease-free survival (DFS) and OS among these groups were determined by Kaplan-Meier analysis, and risk factors for outcome were calculated by a Cox proportional hazards model.
Seventy, 65, and 19 patients were assigned to the RCS 1, 2, and 3 subgroups, respectively. Patients ≥ 60 years (P < 0.001), male sex (P = 0.004), T
stage (P = 0.004), and IB stage (P = 0.006) were more significant in the RCS 2 or 3 subgroups. The RCS had a good area under the curve (AUC) for predicting DFS (AUC = 0.81, P < 0.001) and OS (AUC = 0.93, P < 0.001). The DFS (log-rank = 33.26, P < 0.001) and OS (log-rank = 42.05, P < 0.001) were significantly different among RCS subgroups, with RCS 3 patients displaying the worst survival compared to RCS 1 or 2 patients. RCS 3 was also an independent risk factor for both DFS and OS.
RCS is a useful prognostic indicator in stage I LUAD patients, and RCS 3 patients have poorer survival. However, randomized controlled trials are needed to validate our findings in the future.
Abstract Recent studies in amphiphilic cationic polymers have demonstrated their potential as gene carriers with high transfection efficiency and low cytotoxicity in the in vitro settings to deliver ...drug, siRNA and plasmid DNA. Yet their safety and efficacy in vivo remain to be a challenge, and require further investigation. In our previous work, PP80 was synthesized as a novel amphiphilic cationic polymer by grafting hydrophobic polyphenylalanine segment on PEI, which displayed higher transfection efficiency than PEI in a number of cell lines in vitro . Here, we reported the favorable biocompatibility displayed by PP80/pDNA complex both in vitro and in vivo . Furthermore, when therapeutic gene rev-casp-3 was conjugated to PP80 and administered intratumorally to a HeLa xenograft model, significant tumor apoptosis was induced with concurrent tumor growth inhibition, indicating that PP80 mediated expression of rev-casp-3 gene in solid tumors with not detectable side effects on the tumor-bearing mice. These data demonstrated that PP80 warrants further investigation as a promising cancer gene delivery vehicle.
Salient-points-guided face alignment Hao, Yangyang; Zhu, Hengliang; Wu, Kai ...
Multimedia systems,
10/2019, Volume:
25, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Regression-based face alignment approach is fast and accurate but is always limited by the initial face. Aim at limitation of initialization in regression methods, this paper presents a novel ...two-stage framework named salient-points-guided face alignment. In first stage, we use cascade regression framework to train a salient points (eye centers, nose, mouth corners) localization model. Then the salient points information is used as a guidance for searching the similar faces from training set. In second stage, leveraging the similar faces to generate the initial face for all points regression. In order to give more comprehensive comparison, a new evaluation metric is proposed. Considering the global distance between estimated face and ground-truth, the new evaluation metric is defined as sum of the global distance and the widely used average point-to-point distance. The results show that our approach can achieve state-of-the-art performance (12% higher than the human performance on COFW) and the new evaluation metric is more reasonable.
Strong ultraviolet (UV) radiation at high altitude imposes a serious selective pressure, which may induce skin pigmentation adaptation of indigenous populations. We conducted skin pigmentation ...phenotyping and genome-wide analysis of Tibetans in order to understand the underlying mechanism of adaptation to UV radiation. We observe that Tibetans have darker baseline skin color compared with lowland Han Chinese, as well as an improved tanning ability, suggesting a two-level adaptation to boost their melanin production. A genome-wide search for the responsible genes identifies
showing strong signals of positive selection in Tibetans. An enhancer mutation (rs75356281) located in
intron 2 is enriched in Tibetans (58%) but rare in other world populations (0 to 18%). The adaptive allele of rs75356281 is associated with darker skin in Tibetans and, under UVB treatment, it displays higher enhancer activities compared with the wild-type allele in in vitro luciferase assays. Transcriptome analyses of gene-edited cells clearly show that with UVB treatment, the adaptive variant of
promotes melanin synthesis, likely through the interactions of
and
in peroxisomes with other pigmentation genes, and they act synergistically, leading to an improved tanning ability in Tibetans for UV protection.